Stabbed while she was on her way to work — who killed Paige Doherty?

POLICE have arrested a man in connection with the baffling case of murdered schoolgirl Paige Doherty.

POLICE have arrested a man in connection with the death of 15-year-old Paige Doherty, whose body was found near a busy road in Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire.

31-year-old John Leathem is the owner of a Clydebank delicatessen, the spot where Paige was last seen, reports The Sun.

Paige had been sleeping over at a friend’s house the night before she died.

At 8.20am she was seen leaving the deli, on her way to her Saturday job at a hairdressing salon.

She never made it to work, and on Saturday evening her worried mum alerted cops to the situation.

A corpse found in a wooded area near the Great Western Road in Clydebank was later identified as Paige. She had been stabbed to death.

Cops were reportedly searching the area in and around a deli on Wednesday night. They refused to rule out a sexual element to the crime on Tuesday night.

This comes after a teenage boy posted a picture of a bloody knife alongside a sickening boast, claiming he was the killer.

He took to Facebook to share an image of a hand holding a knife, stained with what looked like blood, metro.co.uk reported.

The photo was accompanied by a claim from the boy that he killed Paige. It was met with outage after it was shared widely online.

The image showed a man licking the bloody knife. Paige’s Facebook account was tagged in the post, meaning her family and friends all saw it.

The image that caused Paige Doherty’s family and friends so much grief.

The sick claim was being treated as a prank by a 17-year-old Glasgow boy.

A police spokesman told the Daily Record: “We can confirm that we are aware of these posts. They have been passed to the relevant department to progress as appropriate.”

One man who’d seen the post said he passed the information onto police.

“I phoned them [the police] before I tagged them in it and it was the first they had heard of it. They are now looking into it.”

Paige Doherty was stabbed to death.

The deli had been the focus of intense police inquiries over the past two days. Forensic teams have been seen inside and removing items, while police photographers paid close attention to cars parked nearby.

They also visited a home close by and were seen removing items from it.

Mr Sloan said Paige was a “young, friendly girl with plenty of friends”.

“For her life to be taken away so brutally as such a young age is unfathomable,” the detective said.

On Saturday, as her desperate friends and family looked for her and hoped she would be found alive, a Facebook site was set up to ask for sightings.

Their suspicions were fuelled when they couldn’t reach the normally dependable teen on her mobile.

Then the body was found. And then it was confirmed the body was Paige, which was when her mum Pamela wrote on Facebook the family had “lost our minds” with grief, reported The Mirror.

“Myself and Andy Munro would like to thank everyone for their support and help in trying to find our daughter. Unfortunately we can confirm that it is our beautiful girl page who was found in clydebank.

“Again thank u for all ur support i am seeing everyone’s messages but understandably we’ve a lot on our minds and can’t reply.

“We are absolutely devastated as will many people who know her will be.”

Originally published as Stabbed while she was on her way to work — who killed Paige Doherty?